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Success Quote by Jim Rohn

"We get paid for bringing value to the market place"

About this Quote

Rohn’s line is a piece of capitalist catechism dressed up as plain talk: you don’t earn money by needing it, wanting it, or even working hard in the abstract. You earn money by being useful in a way the market recognizes. The bluntness is the point. It yanks the listener out of a moral vocabulary (deserve, fairness, loyalty) and into an economic one (value, exchange, demand). That shift flatters the audience with agency while quietly narrowing the definition of worth to whatever can be priced.

The intent is motivational but also disciplinary. “We get paid” universalizes the rule, making it sound like physics rather than ideology. “Bringing value” is conspicuously vague, a soft phrase that can cover anything from building software to answering emails, letting the listener project their ambitions onto it. “Market place” (two words in the original cliché) adds a folksy, almost nostalgic sheen, as if commerce is a town square rather than a system of power, gatekeeping, and unequal bargaining.

The subtext is a rebuttal to entitlement and a warning against complacency: no one owes you a paycheck; you must continually justify your cost. Coming from a late-20th-century self-help businessman, it sits squarely in the era’s productivity gospel, when corporate loyalty frayed and “personal branding” began its long rise. It’s persuasive because it’s simultaneously empowering and absolving: if you’re underpaid, increase your value; if someone else is underpaid, the market must be right. That’s the clean, bracing promise - and the cold comfort - embedded in the sentence.

Quote Details

TopicBusiness
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Rohn, Jim. (2026, January 15). We get paid for bringing value to the market place. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-get-paid-for-bringing-value-to-the-market-place-137534/

Chicago Style
Rohn, Jim. "We get paid for bringing value to the market place." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-get-paid-for-bringing-value-to-the-market-place-137534/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We get paid for bringing value to the market place." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-get-paid-for-bringing-value-to-the-market-place-137534/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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We Get Paid for Bringing Value to the Market Place - Jim Rohn
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About the Author

Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn (September 17, 1930 - December 5, 2009) was a Businessman from USA.

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